Dear BARS members,
We are coming up to that time of the year again when we will be asking you to renew your subscriptions to BARS for another year. This gives me a chance in my capacity as President of BARS to remind you of the benefits which subscription brings to you and to the field in general. We aim as an association to promote the best work in romanticism with a special interest in inter and cross disciplinarity, and we aim to support scholars at every stage of their careers, from those just starting out to the very experienced.
This year you will have noticed that in addition to the e-mail alerts that as a member you regularly receive, notifying you of events and publications, the BARS website now boasts a regular blog featuring interviews with scholars in the field and hosts the redesigned and relaunched BARS Review with a bumper edition of reviews. If you haven’t yet visited the site, you are missing out.
Activities this year have included the very successful BARS post-graduate biennial conference ‘Romantic Locations’ held in March at the Jerwood Centre in Grasmere. Additionally, we have supported the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism conference, where we ran a BARS branded seminar on teaching Romanticism on both sides of the Atlantic, and we have provided financial support on request to a number of smaller conferences and seminars based in Britain. (For information on how to apply for such funding, again see the website.) Next year Cardiff is hosting our international conference under the exciting title ‘Romantic Imprints’ – so it is time to consider submitting a paper abstract. At that conference we will be awarding for the first time the BARS First Book Prize; if you have published a first monograph since January 2013 you might wish to enter the competition. If you are a post-graduate student, you are eligible to apply for bursaries both to support your own research and to attend the conference; if you are more senior, please do alert your students to this opportunity. Full details are available on the website. Next year, again for the first time, we are launching a new fellowship for mid-career and senior scholars to be held in conjunction with Chawton House Library, which as many of you will know holds specialist collections of eighteenth-century women’s writing in a beautiful house that Jane Austen knew well – further details will be forthcoming soon.
All the information you need on how to renew your yearly subscription is available on the BARS website — we look forward to your continuing support.
With very best wishes
Nicola Watson, President of the British Association of Romantic Studies